YouTube has responded to calls from viewers to bring back dislikes for Shorts, and their response has caused a fair bit of backlash.
When YouTube first started out, you had a few ways to give your feedback on a video. You could like it, add it to your favorites, comment, and even leave a dislike if you weren’t fully sold on it.
Over the years, dislikes have slowly drifted away. There have been attempts to bring them back through third-party add-ons, and they have been around on YouTube Shorts. However, that has since changed over the last few weeks.
A number of viewers have flagged their disappointment to YouTube that dislikes have disappeared, and they’ve finally addressed things on that front.
YouTube doubles down on removing Dislikes
“We actually retired the dislike button from Shorts to give you clearer, more effective control over your recommendations,” TeamYouTube said on July 14, answering one user on X (formerly Twitter).
“Our research showed it overlapped with tools like “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend this channel”. Streamlining these options removes that ambiguity so you can give more precise feedback!”
They also flagged a longer announcement, which was posted at the end of June 2026, where YouTube explained the reasons for removing dislikes from Shorts.
“Recent experiments showed that simplifying these options made it easier for users to give more specific feedback on videos and led to a more intuitive and better experience overall,” they said in that announcement.
However, fans have hit back at YouTube’s reasoning. “These other tools are shit. Bring back dislike buttons AND dislike count everywhere,” one said.
“NOBODY uses not interested,” added another. “Nobody has bought that since the first time you announced the removal of the dislike button,” another chimed in.
Others pointed to YouTube Rewind 2018 being the reason why dislikes don’t exist anymore as it is still the most disliked video on the platform. In fact, the platform removed all official uploads of Rewind back in January.
